Architect's Burden

 

Interview with Phillipa Anders, PhD.

    A full account from the program’s inception would take days to dictate. I assume you only want our… highlights?

Your assumption would be correct. Your report will be compiled along with other project documentation for future reference.

    Very well, very well… You know perfectly well why we began the project’s implementation. Is there really any need for me to reiterate?

For posterity’s sake, I would ask you to do so.

    Of course. Fine. So, less than a generation after the Eastern intercontinental conflict, major population centers on Earth, Luna, and Mars were attacked by unknown forces, seemingly random in pattern and occurrence. Tensions were still high, geopolitics being what they were… took those idiots weeks to figure out it was an extraterrestrial threat. Humanity needed a countermeasure it really did not have. Well, they had half of the metaphorical puzzle, but it remained in pieces. Field generators, UHT (Interviewer’s note: Ultra-High Tensile) alloys, assembling a combat craft capable of engaging these incursions was a relatively simple task. We were simply in charge of… modifying humans to be capable of properly wielding them.

This proposal was not your idea.

    Yes, I admit I’m happy to say I bear none of that responsibility. It was Silus’ (Interviewer’s note: Doctor Edith Silus, deceased) idea in the first place, although I highly doubt she expected it to actually be implemented. That entire ‘competition’ was full of ridiculous ideas. The swarm concept, for instance. Discounting the latency issues and the August Accords, which were quite the major issues, let me emphasize, it showed less than a 70% increase in efficacy over the IAFs and EAFs in service. Not good enough for frontline service by far! Ground based anti-air batteries were near useless due to countermeasures, anything beyond visual range of optical sensors was more often than not… a crap-shoot, shall we say.

We’re getting off track here.

    Yes, yes, you wanted my account, I’m merely providing important historical context. So. We needed human crewed craft capable of processing and modifying a vast array of different data while under extreme physical stress. It did not take long to realize post-maturity implantation would not suffice. Even full-body prostheses were not up to the task, it eliminated most risk of trauma, but a developed brain could not implement the density of neural laces that were necessary for instrument processing and flight adjustments.

So you decided to start from scratch, beginning modifications in-vitro.

    You’re skipping ahead significantly. And yes, that was the idea. Did you know that there were two other ideas for the program once it was adopted? We rejected them both on ethical grounds. That has to count for something.

Elaborate.

    The first idea was the simplest, only really worry about the brain. Modify under accelerated growth, extract upon maturity, brain-pod permanently mounted in the craft. It was theoretically the best idea. None of us could stomach having to do that. We had limits.

And the second?

    Full-body prosthesis. In those days it wasn’t nearly as sophisticated, so quality of life outside of the craft would have been… significantly impacted. Again, none of us relished vivisecting what was essentially an infant.

So you kept a mainly organic… chassis for your pilots.

    They weren’t ‘our’ pilots, they belonged to humanity- as a whole! And yes. Believe it or not, we had some pangs of conscience left, even as we raised our perfect sacrificial cattle. It posed a unique challenge, but… hm.

    We weren’t starting from zero, not entirely anyway. I’m sure the details are buried away in some top-top secret file. We were aware of some hurdles to overcome, and we did so exceptionally. Believe it or not, I’m quite proud of our work in certain respects. I do loathe the fact that we even needed to do so in the first place. But that wasn’t our call to make. Merely our duty to fulfill.

Could you elaborate on some of the issues you had to contend with, when designing the pilots?

    Certainly. The first major hurdle was physical resiliency. A normal human body is… Squishy. Fragile. Does not appreciate consistently handling over twenty times its own mass. It needed reinforcement on multiple levels. For instance, the circulatory system. While the embryo was still developing, we modified the relevant stem cell receptors to seek and utilize a certain polymer, the full chemical formula of which is long and unimportant. The human body is truly exceptional, and there were very few issues in implementation, down to the smallest capillary. The blood vessels were no longer in danger of bursting under intense G-forces. Upon near-physical maturity, the cardiac system was replaced by a pump. Supplemented by synthetic pulmonary augmentation, it was orders of magnitude more consistent and avoided pesky design flaws such as arrhythmia, or hyperventilation, or… high-G induced pneumothorax. Voila, our pilots could breathe and function where all others would be crushed. 

    There were of course some downsides: these polymer-laced blood vessels were not quite as flexible as the natural equivalent. There were some restrictions in mobility. But with a strict stretching and exercise regimen, values for flexibility were within a standard deviation of the median. We of course strengthened the skeletal structure with titanium ‘honeycomb’ structures it grew around, the spine was made triple-redundant with load-bearing structures and data transmission lines interlaced and… Is all of this really important? You have all the surgical documentation.

It is a summary for the historical record. Please continue, Doctor.

    Of course, of course… muscle reinforcement was nothing special, relatively standard procedure we already had for years. Hormonal glands had sensors and were fully logged, capable of being excited or neutralized to improve various efficiencies. Eyeballs were replaced entirely with higher resolution prostheses. Really, the it’s mostly banal. What you need to know is that they were baseline humans, just… more durable. Shorter than most, as well. A more compact body helped greatly alleviate several inherent structural issues. I believe the tallest subject was about… 157 centimeters. We grew the entire body from inception to physical maturity, 23 year equivalency, in just over 16 months. Modified the telomeres and genetic structures at their base level, halted the growth factor afterwards. Theoretically, they’re physically immortal. They won’t age. Practically…

    Now… Right. The major issue was the brain. As always. We were kept apprised of development of the crafts that would become the WIVERN. The brain needed to interpret the data flow and control every system of the craft simultaneously. Any lapse would drastically affect performance. Dozens of independent thrust vectors. An entirely malleable field generator, with hundreds of shape redistribution spikes. None of this could be left up to a computer outside of a rudimentary autopilot and other pre-programmed flight methods. No, the pilot would need to be aware of all factors and modify them in-flight. By-hand control schemes were far too clumsy and slow. A fully organic brain would not do. A conventional neural lace did not have the bandwidth necessary to interpret these factors, either. A fully artificial system was not flexible enough to creatively interpret and modify commands, at least not at an acceptable level. 

    So, a new system became our goal: augmentation at three separate levels. Deep layer implantation began as soon as the brain reached infancy, which was the only stage with sufficient plasticity to support such an invasive procedure. Supplemental layers were added as it matured, with the connection port directly mated to the hindbrain, upper stem, and spinal replacement. Lastly, a full lace would act as an interpreter, collating, receiving, and transmitting data from the deep and mid-layers. It was… Absurdly complex. A challenge. Mounted the whole assembly in a viscous solution to keep it from mashing against the skull, complete brain and spinal fluid replacement. Comprehensive. Dangerous.

There were casualties.

    Yes.

Will you expand upon that?

    I will not.

…

    Human error was a factor.

    As were the limitations of the technology we had.

    Euthanasia was necessary on several occasions. We still had some ethical standards. They didn’t suffer.

    The data was… invaluable. Their deaths, accidental, saved lives in the future, you understand? We gleaned much on how to properly undertake implantation processes.

I understand, Doctor. Take your time.

    Right…

    By and large, the program was a success. Fifty-two viable subjects. From an initial pool of…

Sixty-four.

    I’m well aware of the number, thank you very much.

My apologies.

    They had learning programs embedded into their systems. Could walk, talk, think, fly; all right out of the tank. It was a modified version of the systems used for paralysis treatments; teach the brain to talk to the limbs again… we used it to prepare them. As best we could. That was not my department.

    I am quite proud of them, you know. I doubt they’d say the same for me. The few that are left.

    …Nonetheless, I am happy that it’s a voluntary force now. They were an expensive stopgap in… many senses of the word. We crossed too many lines making them. We can accomplish similar procedures on adult subjects nowadays, even if the bandwidth remains… substandard by prototype metrics.

    Still. The next generations were... are, effective enough. And they’re not…

    Crimes against nature.

    We shouldn’t have done it. But we didn’t have a choice, you must understand that. They stood between us and extinction.

I’m not accusing you of anything, Doctor. We’re getting an accurate record, that’s all.

    You don’t have to; we did that enough to ourselves as is. You know what happened to Edith, right? You’d be interviewing her right now if she hadn’t jumped into cold vacuum. Couldn’t stand looking at the result of her idea. The way they talked, acted… everything was almost normal. Almost, but… you could tell. You couldn’t quantify what was different about them, they seemed ordinary enough at a cursory glance, but they’d look right through you, into your soul. The more of them were lost, the more they stared…

    Sorry…

    I’m being ridiculous right now. 

    Could you give me a moment?

I believe we have all we need, Doctor Anders. Your account was enlightening. Do you consent to it being added to the official record? 

    What? Oh, yes, of course, sorry. Go ahead.

Thank you for your time.

…Keep well, alright?

…

    I’ll attempt to.

[Interview Ends]